The Hostage

There was a small lake right beside him, frozen solid as only the North could freeze it — and across its surface, Harad looked at his own reflected face.

Unruly, overgrown hair. Hollow, sunken eyes. A beard grown out ragged and sharp... Yes, this was how he had looked back then. He had been all but a broken man.

...This is insane.

He had truly regressed. A full twenty years into the past.

And that was exactly why he was so angry.

Had she actually lost her mind?

The Grand Duke had been a woman masquerading as a man. Astonishing, certainly — but to Harad, twenty years old again, it was a trifling matter.

What truly galled him was that the stone the Grand Duke had kept all this time was genuine — and that he had been force-fed the genuine article. Why him, of all people? The one who should have swallowed that stone was the Grand Duke.

"Hostage. Lost your mind again?"

The man with the worm of a scar was sneering at him.

And it helped. For Harad, who could not feel the North's chill, the taunt was a splash of cold water.

"Hostage."

A word he hadn't heard in a very long time.

"That's right. I was a hostage."

There was no need to strain himself digging up the past. His memories of this era were as vivid as yesterday.

It had always been that way. He had never wanted to remember — and yet remember he must.

"My family. Is it gone?"

Harad asked as he shrugged off his coat — a staple of life in the North, and something he had no use for.

"Wh-what?"

The worm-like scar carved into the man's face twisted. This was the knight the North had sent to fetch Harad.

A face he knew. Gulen — the sort who had scorned him at first and warmed to him later. Then again, every relationship he had ever had went exactly that way.

The Harad of this era was a hostage the North had snapped up. And the coward the North despised most of all.

"I asked whether my parents had passed on. Were their hearts eaten out?"

Gulen's brows drew together.

"They are. House Iagar was eradicated. Every Iagar but you had their hearts devoured."

He did answer, at least. In the North's eyes, Harad Iagar was a pitiful creature — but it was also true that his lot was a wretched one.

Harad smiled bitterly.

The Grand Duke's piece. That stone was a game piece that sent its owner into the past.

And to think it was real.

It held the power to change the past — though how much changed depended on the strength of the one who returned. The past that lay before the point of one's return could not be altered.

Couldn't it have sent me back a little younger?

Harad thought of the Grand Duke who had forced the stone down his throat, and smiled bitterly once more. Not more, not less — exactly one month. If he had come back just one month further, House Iagar might never have been eradicated at all.

So the day of one's return cannot be chosen, it seems.

Harad swallowed his regret. His circumstances demanded gratitude for making it back to this era at all. It was only that the day of the eradication kept rising to mind — that much, he could not help.

"And the beast. You didn't catch it?"

"If you mean the mage who was hunting you, he fled before I ever arrived."

"So there couldn't even be a funeral."

"There was nothing left to bury. Everyone was reduced to ash in the fire you set. Don't tell me you've actually gone mad?"

The look Gulen had been wearing — the look one gives a madman — turned grave.

"If you've gone mad, Serzilla is in trouble."

It was not hard to understand a mind flickering in and out. Harad was the sole survivor of House Iagar, and all of it had happened barely a month ago. But there was no way Gulen could know that. What mattered to him was that Serzilla wanted Harad — not a mad Harad, but a sane one.

"I'll fix you right now."

Gulen raised his fist. The fist went for nothing but Harad's face.

"I'm not mad. I've only just come to my senses."

Harad laid his hand on the fist — and the fist slid smoothly down below his waist.

Not by Gulen's choosing. He had slackened nothing; the fist had been forced down by Harad. How? Gulen didn't think to wonder. He was more astonished that Harad was speaking so naturally.

"Isn't this an improvement, even for you? Better than a cripple who couldn't manage a proper sentence."

Gulen was bewildered, but there was no mistaking it: Harad had come back to himself.

A cripple. The Harad Gulen had endured for the past month had truly been one.

That Harad had done whatever Gulen told him to. He ate when told to eat and took his beatings when told to take them, and no matter how hard he was beaten, he was too terrified even to scream properly. The trauma of his family's eradication. And the fact that the eradication had happened because of Harad himself — that truth was what had made a wreck of him.

"The trauma's all cured now."

"Truly?"

"These days I think of nothing but revenge."

"Now that I can appreciate."

Gulen crinkled his scar into a grotesque grin. Tears were a waste of breath; the man who made you shed them deserved to be hunted down and beaten to death. Any northerner worth the name ought to manage at least that.

"But this, I truly cannot eat."

Harad flung the ball of raw meat Gulen had handed him to the ground. It sank neatly into the snow, which stood knee-high.

"I went to the trouble of making that for you."

"Not anything you make. Bring me something someone else made."

Frowning, Gulen still fished a strip of jerky from his pouch and handed it over.

"And speak properly, too. I'm not a cripple anymore."

"And why would I do that?"

Gulen snorted.

A hostage was no slave. It was a station that demanded respect. But in the North, conduct like Gulen's drew no rebuke. The problem was Harad, struck dumb by his trauma — there was no fault to be found in Gulen for changing his manner upon seeing such a Harad.

Such was the North. And yet, there were exceptions.

"Could you carry on like that in front of Serzilla?"

The ruler of the North. When the Ducal House of Serzilla took someone in, that someone became a criminal — guilty or not. If the reverence of strength was the North's rule, then Serzilla's word was the North's truth. And that Serzilla had taken Harad captive. Not as a slave — as a hostage.

"Behave from here on and I'll say no more about it. I bear some of the blame myself, for never having pressed the point."

"Very well."

Gulen answered readily. It was not only the offer to overlook the fault. It was that Harad knew his own fault. In the North, being nothing but a punching bag was a sin. Gulen rather liked the fact that Harad understood the North's natural order so well.

"We'll reach a village by nightfall."

Harad gauged the distance by the size of the snow-capped peaks on the horizon. Three more days, and they would arrive at Serzilla.

"...How do you know that?"

"I've memorized the geography of the entire continent."

Gulen tilted his head. The village they would soon reach was so small it never appeared on maps. And this man knew even its location?

"Have you been to the North before?"

"I lived here, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠as it happens. Fifteen years or so."

Gulen shook his head.

He hasn't fully recovered after all.

The carriage halted around sunset. Climbing down, Harad found Gulen raking his fingers roughly through his hair — because of the village they had arrived at.

"It's done for."

The village was dead. Not dead for long, either — the northerners' corpses had not yet been claimed by the snow.

"Did a mage do this?"

"Wolves did it."

"Then what is that?"

Harad pointed at a cross standing beside the village entrance. A corpse hung from it, hacked to ribbons — and it looked older than the villagers' bodies.

"How should I know. Some mage the villagers caught wind of, I'd imagine."

Gulen didn't spare it so much as a glance. He was enraged by the village's death, not that mage's.

The words had been carved into the corpse's flesh with a knife. A familiar formula. The demon of the Outer Realm meant a mage; the sun and the moon meant Raan, god of the sun, and Ruan, god of the moon.

"It's been a long time since I've seen that inscription, too."

Mages were to be executed on the spot. Moreover, every such killing had to be reported to the Orders. The humans of the continent bore that duty — and that was why mages were so rare on the continent. The Sun and the Moon. Both Orders hunted down and killed every last mage they could find.

"Feeling a sense of kinship, perhaps?"

Gulen asked, watching Harad, who could not tear his eyes from the corpse on the cross.

"I do. If it were a good mage, I might even pity it."

Gulen could not comprehend. Good or bad — what did that matter? To the North, a mage was simply an enemy that picked at Serzilla's Great Wall whenever boredom struck.

"Let's not get careless. You can see for yourself — most northerners follow the Orders' doctrine. It's only the Ducal House of Serzilla and the knights under it that do not."

Those who served Serzilla believed in Serzilla, not in gods.

"Honestly, I cannot fathom why Serzilla wants you. I don't much want to, either."

"Blasphemous."

"The blasphemous thing here is your existence."

Harad must never be revealed to the world. Not for his own sake — for the sake of Serzilla, which had taken him as its hostage.

"Please, let us travel quietly. Sleep tonight, ride two days more, and we are at Serzilla."

Gulen gestured at the dead village. His meaning: stop prattling about the death of some mage, and mourn the villagers instead.

A blizzard was bearing down on them. Gulen wanted to put the villagers into the ground before that blizzard — as pitiless as the North's own natural law — could bury them instead. Only then could they be reborn in the next world as human beings, not as snow.

"I don't think quiet is going to happen."

Harad murmured it, gazing off at something. To Gulen's eyes there was nothing but the blizzard. But Harad could see past it.

"A wolf pack is coming."

"..."

"I mean it."

Harad repeated himself to the dubious Gulen — and right on cue, a howl tore through the storm.

Gulen stared at him, startled. Harad, and not he — the actual knight — had sensed the attack first.

"Presumably the ones who made the village what it is."

"Come to feed on the corpses?"

Gulen muttered the words, seething. There was no end more disgraceful than to be eaten by beasts. A northerner might fight them and die alongside them, but he must never become their meal.

"No. They came because they sensed me."

What kind of nonsense is that...

Gulen frowned.

"A cry with power in it — a magic beast, then."

It was the right answer. Only then did Gulen feel the mana too. The pack's leader was a magic beast.

"Will you fight it?"

Gulen stared levelly at Harad as he asked. The man was smiling. Was he planning to slip away in the chaos of battle? At the very least, that was how it looked to Gulen — because Harad had come back to his senses. And a clear-headed Harad was sharper than Gulen gave him credit for. Hadn't he been the first to notice the wolf pack, and beyond that, that its leader was a magic beast?

The beasts' cries drew near. Gauging distance by sound was meaningless. The pack was already there, right in front of Gulen.

They came because they sensed me.

Gulen recalled Harad's words. It had not been nonsense.

Dozens of wolves slavered over the village's corpses and over Gulen himself — but not the leader. It had eyes only for Harad. Its eyes came up no higher than the level of Gulen's face, and its bulk matched that stature; its torso alone was the size of three Gulens. This was no low-grade beast that preyed exclusively on the weak. It had intelligence. It was a beast that sought to grow stronger by devouring what was stronger still.

"Hah."

The realization wrung a hollow laugh from him. Didn't that mean a beast like that had identified Harad as its prey?

That cripple.

Gulen was carrying out Serzilla's orders, nothing more; he had never sensed any particular worth in Harad. Worth — there was nothing of the sort, only distaste. From the day he was born, Harad had been that kind of existence.

"Grrrh."

The magic beast, drool streaming from its jaws, felt the aura rising off Gulen's body — and the drooling stopped. Magic beasts felt no appetite for aura. The only thing they ate was mana. And so it classified Gulen as an ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠obstacle: an obstacle standing between it and its meal of mana. The beast howled once at the sky, and the pack hurled itself at Gulen.

Gulen did not move. If he did, he was certain Harad would spy the opening and bolt.

My axe... damn it all.

Transport Harad Iagar to the North. It was a dangerous assignment, and Gulen had not even been able to bring his beloved axe — his position did not allow him to catch the eyes of the Empire or the Orders.

So Gulen stood his ground and swung his fists. The jaws of the lead wolf caved in. He split open the maw lunging for his shoulder and brought his elbow crashing down on the wolf snapping at his flank. Crunch — a wolf clamped down on his thigh and shattered its own teeth for its trouble, such was the aura's protection. Gulen's knee then pulverized the ribs of the now toothless beast.

Wolves like these were no obstacle at all. Their claws and fangs could not pierce a body steeped in aura, and a single punch from Gulen sent even a wolf thicker than he was straight to the grave.

The fight against the pack was less a battle than a slaughter — Gulen's furious face jutting out from the heart of the wolf swarm like a splinter.

Then the coolness that had been falling on his heated face vanished. Had the blizzard stopped? No — if anything, his already darkening field of vision grew darker still.

...The magic beast.

Where the sky should have been, he saw ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠an Adam's apple. A slimy tongue, and teeth as thick as his forearm. The snow had not stopped — the beast was blocking it out. The beast that had pounced at Gulen, only his shoulders and head jutting from the snow, had spread its jaws wide.

"Ah."

Saliva spattered onto his face. In that instant, Gulen knew he was going to die. He did not close his eyes. Through them he watched his life flash past, tangled with the future he had dreamed of. Timber for the next Great Warrior. The youngest knight. The bottom rung of the 1st Knight Order for now — but someday, himself as the next Great Warrior...

...And a magic beast devoured by fire.

"...?"

Only then did his eyes see reality. The beast that had leapt to swallow Gulen's upper body in a single bite was roaring with flame as it fell. The fire was vast enough to engulf that enormous beast whole in one gulp.

The fallen beast rolled across the ground. The snow ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠lay knee-deep, yet it could not smother the flames. Worse, the fire only burned fiercer, devouring even the wolves that remained.

This was no ordinary fire. Gulen realized that the flames were eating the magic beast's mana and growing stronger with every swallow.

"Can't even take down one of these? Ah — right, back then I was the lowest of the low."

A voice threaded with laughter drifted over. And above Harad, a sun was hanging in the air. Not the true sun. A sun that belonged to Harad alone.

...Magic.

A sun the size of a shed shone down on Gulen, and its heat was thoroughly nauseating. A demon with the blood of the Outer Realm. To the continent, a mage was an enemy that had to die.

...And yet Gulen could not kill Harad. Because Serzilla wanted him. He did not know why... a mage called Harad.